The W.O.R.D.S. Project (Words Open Resonating Depths of the Sacred): An alphabetical search for questions.*

Hell? There is no fire, no devil, no death that holds me in its hot grasp of fear,Even heaven holds no charm to trick me when it is so clear, that, yes,Life can be hell if it is fueled by fears of shoulds and musts, but thisLife is my heaven, a pearl ground by the rough sands of creativity and trust.

You know what is my own personal hell, my own personal devil? Me.

Me, with the rules I learned as a child; rules that aren’t real, that are meaningless, but yet still hold sway over my unconscious like a tightly corseted and hair-bunned school marm with a ruler slapping in her palm.

And most of these rules weren’t even specifically given, they were implied, and many, in my still squooshy and muddy child-brain, were misunderstood. But the connections I made, incorrectly fused as they may have been, were built into, and sheetrocked over in, the foundation of my being.

And so now, as an adult who is beginning to understand that not all my actions, thoughts, feelings make sense, and that sometimes I respond/react in a certain way despite any logical explanation, I am attempting to peer deeper into the depths of my unconscious for reasons. I have to be curious. Ask questions. “Why did I just feel a stab of pain when she said that?” “What was that discomfort I felt talking to him?” “Why did I just get SO angry about that tiny thing?” “Why am I feeling so sad right now?”

Or not even questions, just noticing. Without judgment. “Huh, I felt that in my chest.” ” Interesting, I just got really upset about that…”

Dismantling the walls and floors, or — to switch metaphors — unpeeling the onion of our psyche is not easy nor particularly fun. It takes time and courage and a lot of trust — trust that if you are willing to look into “hell” you will eventually find the “heaven” of a life less hindered by old messages and rules and fears which no longer apply.

And creativity is vital. To write, draw, paint, dance, sing, cook… anything that brings you deeper than Monkey Mind, which tends to gibber-gabber a bunch of bull-hickey most of the time. It’s all old tapes stuck on a loop. Turn it off. Write a new story.

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*This project is an off-shoot of the work I did for my graduate degree where I used Words to help heal from my negative indoctrination from “The Word.” Words are powerful agents for transformation! (Thesis/Final Project: Calling Little Gypsy Home: Reclaiming Voice Through Expressive Writing and the Sacred Feminine; Memoir: Sing from the Womb: Leaving Fundamentalism in Search in Voice.)